The Fishers City Council last month enacted a Wheel Tax, which will impose a $25 annual levy on vehicles, charged every year when you buy or renew your auto registration.  Even though it is called a Wheel Tax, it doesn’t tax each wheel.  The $25 annual tax is per vehicle for most residents, but can be as much as $40 a year for larger vehicles, like semis and RVs.

The Wheel Tax will not be imposed in Fishers until 2018 due to deadlines written into the law.

Mayor Scott Fadness first publicly proposed this tax during a city council retreat August 22nd at Conner Prairie.  Fadness gave strong support to enacting the tax, saying there is no way to fund road construction and maintenance without it, under the current funding regimen provided by state lawmakers.

Council members were not anxious to enact a new tax, but also know that without the $2 million per year this tax will generate, keeping up with road infrastructure needs would be difficult, maybe impossible, without the Wheel Tax funds.  The vote to approve the tax was unanimous.

Mayor Fadness, who was heavily involved with legislative lobbying on behalf of local Indiana governments through his work with the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns (IACT), believes many more localities will follow Fishers in enacting the Wheel Tax.

Lindsey Erdody of the Indianapolis Business Journal (IBJ) has an excellent story in the October 10-16 edition of the paper, on Page 3A.  She provides some fascinating information about the Wheel Tax.  Mayor Andy Cook of Westfield opposes the tax because it is only imposed on residents, while not paid by the many others using local streets and roads.

The IBJ story says 10 of 76 cities eligible to do so have enacted the Wheel Tax so far.

I asked Mayor Fadness at a recent media budget briefing what the General Assembly would need to do for him to recommend that the city council rescind the Wheel Tax.  He said he can foresee no action state lawmakers are likely to take that would fund his local infrastructure sufficiently, allowing the city to remove the Wheel Tax.

So the bottom line is this.  Members of the Indiana State Legislature know roads are falling apart around the state, but appear unwilling to take the heat of enacting a tax increase at the state level to deal with it.  So the answer is – allowing local governments to raise taxes by choosing to pass the Wheel Tax if they want to fund local street and road work.

You can read Lindsey Erdody’s story at this link, but you may have trouble accessing it if you do not have an online subscription to the IBJ.